What is wild yeast?Updated 2 years ago

Wild yeast is an amazing thing. It is a collection of several (or maybe hundreds?) of strains of yeast (the dusty-looking coating on apples and grapes is wild yeast, but it lives all over the place), along with local good bacteria. Bakers yeast is a single strain of yeast isolated from the wild yeast bunch and selected for speed, flavor, and consistency. Baker's yeast alone does not have the benefits of the wild yeast culture, which acts to break down the protein and sugar structure of grains, and unlocks their nutrients. We don't know all the technical details about why folks are more sensitive to single-strain yeasts, but we think it is because to make bread more quickly (i.e. cheaply) you need to use a pretty high quantity of yeast and often sugar, so you have too much yeast breaking down the sugar but never breaking down the grains. Learn more on the blog.